Personal Next. Melinda Harrison

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      High Achievers

      People often ask me what it was like to compete at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. They tell me that they can’t imagine anything more incredible. But I always tell them that I feel my peak moment wasn’t at the Olympic Games themselves but at the Olympic Trials six weeks earlier.

      In the last few hours before that race, many thoughts zoomed through my head. I knew I had the proficiency to compete at the elite level. As an athlete, I had made the sacrifices asked of me. I had regulated my behaviours to achieve my goals. Through all my training and many competitions, my attitude had always been to keep learning, keep trying. Although my failures had taught me more than my successes had, I was acutely aware that each win and each loss represented only a moment in time. But I had done the work, recommitted after every bout of bone-shaking doubt, and I knew I could achieve the results. I competed on the last day of the six-day trials, and leading up to my race, I had heartily supported my teammates, encouraging their success. They reciprocated in turn, telling me how much they believed in me, too. Warm, positive feelings abounded.

      As I stood on the blocks, I felt a deep sense of belonging. I never once in those moments doubted my identity as a world-class athlete. That I had spent many years preparing for this event filled me with assurance. As I jumped into the water (backstrokers start in the pool), I said to myself, “Here we go. No matter the result, I have done everything I can to give it my all.” I wanted this, and even though I was nervous, I had mentally trained to control these emotions. Before the starting buzzer sounded, I looked up to see my entire family in the stands. I had always known that they supported me, but more importantly, I had come to realize that they would love me no matter the result. They were a secure base. There are no guarantees in high performance sports, but as the starter said “Take your mark,” I was filled with an unflagging certainty that the race was mine to own. I had no fear and I was ready.

      I touched the wall at the end of the race, exhausted, heaving to catch my breath. The times flashed up on the board. I knew what I had to do to make it to the Olympics: meet a qualifying standard and come in either first or second. I looked around and saw my coach jumping up and down, my friends running toward where I would exit the pool, and my family hugging each other in the stands. As I write this I still feel the emotions of that moment. The heavy weight of dreams lifted, my emotions skipped from joy to relief, from excitement to an incredible sense of honour. I was going to compete at the Olympics. For the next few hours I celebrated with family and friends. And then the reality hit me. I had spent my entire career wanting to make an Olympic team. I now had six weeks to reset my goals. I had never before this moment contemplated my race at the Olympics.

      At the Olympic Games, with thousands of people in the stands, reporters and commentators whirring about, the lights of television cameras beaming, and the eyes of millions of people in their homes watching me, I was terrified. I was the same elite athlete I had been at the trials, but my attitude now was one of fear. “What if I mess up in front of all these people?” I didn’t feel I belonged with my fellow competitors, and I couldn’t identify as an Olympic finalist. My confidence faltered and, along with it, the belief that I could put together a better performance than I had at the trials. Although I often used adrenalin to fuel an amazing performance, now I simply couldn’t channel it. I swam slower at the Olympic Games than I had at the trials.

      I HAD STARTED getting serious about swimming at age fourteen. Some family friends and coaches saw potential in me, and with my parents’ naive consent, I left my family in London, Ontario, to attend high school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at Pine Crest, well known for its swimming and diving teams.

      I received a full athletic scholarship at the University of Michigan and was a multi-year All American in five events (100-yard backstroke, 200-yard backstroke, 200-yard individual medley, 400-yard individual medley, and 400-yard medley relay team). For my junior and senior years, I was the captain of the Michigan Wolverines swim team.

      At the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, as Melinda Copp, I represented Canada in the 200-metre backstroke. I finished sixth in my heat and nineteenth overall. The reality was that I prepared myself to make the Olympics, but not for my life beyond that. Over the course of my swimming career—the ups and downs of training, the failures and successes along the way—I was incredibly happy and fulfilled. I had more fun and excitement than I could fully appreciate at the time. People around me challenged me to achieve things that I never thought I could. Like many athletes, I planned some things down to the tenth of a second, and other things I simply did not think or worry about.

      Many of you probably have a story like mine, in which years of preparation and training came together to achieve a dream. You may also have felt the reverberations of uncertainty that inevitably surface after you accomplish a life goal. Although I prepared myself to make the Olympics, it’s fair to say that I did not prepare for my life beyond that point.

      When I left competitive swimming in 1985, at the age of twenty-two, I had just graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in communications, and I was ready to enter the professional world. Success and winning had defined me. I felt proud and confident. My post-sport career, I was sure, would be just as stimulating and affirming as my athletic career had been.

      And then something unthinkable happened.

      Nobody offered me a job.

      Walking around my adoptive city of Toronto, I would mull over my situation. “I know how to work hard,” I would say to myself. “I listen and follow advice . . . I know how to set and achieve goals . . . I know how to follow tight and tough schedules . . . I know how to succeed. Why won’t someone give me a chance?” Until that point, I had been encouraged and celebrated. I was an Olympian, and yet I couldn’t find a job. I even had trouble getting in the door for an interview.

      After leaving the world of competitive sports, I felt like the metaphorical fish out of water, and I needed to find a new pond to swim in. But I had no idea how to do that. All I knew was that I felt alone and like a failure. I craved new ways to win, to be recognized, to feel confident . . . and to afford an apartment. I wanted to be in good physical shape, but fitting in “exercise” around trying to find a job was a foreign concept to me—my previous life had been about training to the point of failure, day in and day out. I envied my non-athletic peers and fellow university graduates who had already started their careers, and I was watching them score win after win. But I myself was falling apart.

      Eventually I did put my head down to focus on pushing forward, one objective at a time—something I learned to do well during my athletic training. After some time, I received an offer for an entry-level job at an insurance company. I was incredibly relieved to no longer feel as though I were treading water.

      But the echoes of my intense athletic life persisted. Driven to prove myself, I naively set my sights on running the whole company one day. I was on “athlete auto-pilot”: give me a task and I would do it faster, and better, than anyone else. But after a couple of years into the job, I found myself staring down a career path. I had declared a goal—and I did not back away from goals—but I had begun to question whether I truly wanted it. Was I replicating habits I’d formed as an athlete simply to be seen as successful? Tough questions such as these forced me to reassess myself and my goals.

      A few years later, I married and was blessed to become pregnant. Although I had happily chosen family life, having my first child was a wake-up moment. As an athlete and in my early career, life had been all about me. I was far from a selfish person, but I had lived a selfish life. Now life was no longer about just me. My husband Jim and I were solely responsible for our daughter (and then our son and second daughter). My all-in attitude was “Be the best parent you can be.” But a voice inside me was constantly whispering, “I need something more.”

      So I went searching.

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